A More Detailed Suihan Grammar
by Eduard Tubin
Summary: Azula has sent a second letter to his brother and Lady Mai. This is a summary of my attempts to make a language for the Avatar Realm that isn't Asian and one that would belong to a rationalist culture. I'll use DocX to provide a full representation of the formatting and include more charts if requested including proper charts. The Komatsu Post Office and Downtown is the picture.


**The Suihan Haters Handbook**

**Meet the Family and Welcome to the Suihan Language**

**By: Azula Kai of The Fire Nation**

Dear Brother Zuko

Lady Mai has expressed a desire to learn Suihan but also trepidation at the perceived difficulty of the task. Suihan has a reputation for being a difficult language. I can say the difficulty of any language largely depends on the method by which its learned. I picked up Suihan because I lived with and interacted with native speakers but an introductory course can prove difficult or easy depending on the quality of the teaching. I offer this advice by way of a disclaimer because she has asked for a more formal description of the grammar of the language. A well stocked bookstore will offer half a dozen grammar books but at best they simply frustrate rather than inform. I have tried my best to describe Suihan grammar not because I think it will teach your wife anything but she asked for it. They say beware of what you wish for because you might get it.

**Welcome to the Family**

**'or'**

**The Indo European Language Family**

The late anthropologist Professor Zeng of Ba sing Se University did much to advance linguistics through his work on ancient Earth Kingdom civilizations. He found evidence of the vast family of languages Sanskrit and Suihan belonged to and coined the mane of this family of languages - the _Indo European_ language family. He chose this name because be believed the languages originated in the Southern Earth Kingdom near the Indo River. Zeng chose the name _Indo Yurai__be_ or_ Indo River Origins_ in Kyoshinese and this became Indo European in academic texts.

More than seven thousand years ago, the Indo European tribe began to migrate and spread all throughout the Earth Kingdom. Zeng found only ten languages which existed long enough to leave a written record and only a few left any substantial records; but three thousand years ago, dozens of Indo European languages may have existed spoken by diverse tribes in nearly every part of the Earth Kingdom. The rise of Han Chinese slowly pushed other languages to the edges of the Earth Kingdom as Chinese culture and civilization slowly spread out from the area around Ba Sing Se to all the lands of that vast continent. Sanskrit eventually became the liturgical language of the Air Nomads and Suihan spread out along the coast and river valleys of the Southern Earth Kingdom. The Indo European tribes living in the deserts of the Earth Kingdom lived in isolation and they too survived. Zeng found evidence the _Sand Bending_ tribes spoke Indo European languages and after the War, this was confirmed. Linguists now believe Indo European languages are_ immensely old _and Suihan has changed comparatively little in fundamental ways.

Zeng used several techniques to place languages in a family. One of the more intuitive techniques involves examining shared vocabulary – words that have a similar form. Suihan and the language of the Sand Benders (Huttite) have common forms for the numbers one through ten. The l;anguages in bold are Indo European: Kyoshinese is not.

**English: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.**

**Suihan: an, daó, tri, pédar, pimp, seis, sieben, atto, nén, tasn.**

**Huttite: en, tva, dryis, pyits, chinch, chwech, heptan, yokt, dyen, dechim.**

Kyoshinese: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju.

In this letter, I will refer to_ 'typical'_ Indo European features. Think of these as genetic traits carried into the modern age by the Suihan Language but were seen in the languages of the ancients. I won't use Sand Bender dialects here because I have no clue how to spell them. Indo European languages are not tone languages, they make use of endings, they have relatively free word order, gender, a shared vocabulary of common words, they have irregular forms for nouns and verbs, and lack deferential forms or titles. I mention this because some people believe (wrongly) that Kyoshinese is the more polite cousin of Suihan mostly because they have similar sounds and share a written language. They shared contact and they have some vocabulary and even some grammatical similarities but are unrelated.

The Suihan and Sanskrit languages fascinate linguists because they both have ancient roots and yet had become distant cousins when both were first written down. Even as the Air Nomads wrote chants in Sanskrit, Suihan and Sanskrit had gone through thousands of years of separate change. Sanskrit has served as the liturgical language of the Air Nomads for three thousand years and may have existed as a spoken language twice as long. The Suihan language can trace its origins at least that far back – as it is only an indirect, second cousin of Sanskrit; it must be very old. Fire Nation Chinese has changed less in the last one thousand years than Suihan has in three thousand or more years. The Fire Nation Avatar from that time could not understand you but a peasant farmer speaking Suihan from four thousand years ago could make himself understood to Karo.

**The Basics of Suihan Grammar**

**'or'**

**This Can Be a Bit Mind Bending at First**

Suihan is a language of the _agglutinative_ type with an _ergative_ grammar. An agglutinative language is easy to explain. Chinese is an_ isolating _language which simply means that it uses small words in a fixed order group to communicate. The Chinese verb use extra words to communicate time frame (tense) or person (I, you he, she it, we, etc.). Suihan just takes these little words and 'glues' them together to form a word. The term agglutinative means 'glue together'. In the case of a verb, the past tense and then the person ending are stacked at the end. This explains why Suihan words can grow to staggering behemoths.

The concept of an ergative language always strikes us native Chinese speakers as alien but it is fairly basic. Chinese and Kyoshinese and most other languages are accusative which is linguistic speak for 'always uses the same form for the subject.' Ergative is linguistic code for 'always follows the thing that changes the most'. If _Mai stabs Zuko_, Mai may not change much except for a feeling of satisfaction. Zuko changes a good deal possibly from being a living Zuko to being an ex - Zuko. In this sentence Mai is the subject (actor or doer) Zuko is the object or the thing changed by the action. If _Mai kills Zuko_, again Zuko changes a good deal, Mai doesn't. Again Mai is the subject. If _Zuko dies_, he has changed but in this case, change comes from within. Suihan has an ergative grammar and thus has a set of endings to add onto things that changes while leaving the unchanged subject alone. We will explore endings in Suihan later.

Kyoshinese has a very simple _accusative grammar_ and uses the particle (a kind of little grammar word) -o to mark the object. Ignore the particle 'wa' because no one really knows what it does except the Kyoshinese and we don't care. If we translate the sentence Mai kills Zuko in Kyoshinese we end up with:

**Mai wa Zuko o korosu.**

Suki provided some of the help in writing this letter and her knowledge of her native language includes learning how to write out Chinese characters with a brush. This demonstrates yet another aspect of Kyoshinese culture that makes it a real pain. I do not speak Kyoshinese and will gloss over some subtle aspects of their grammar and will save much brush work. In Kyoshinese, a little word or particle tells the listener what each player does and the verb always gets stuck at the end.

If Zuki just up and dies (perhaps wishful thinking on the princess's part, perhaps poisoning, heart defect – we have no cause) the Kyoshinese might say:

**Zuko wa shinu. **

If Kyoshinese behaved like Suihan, the first sentence would be unchanged.

**Mai wa Zuko o korosu.**

So far so good, but then things get a little different if Zuko up and dies on his own accord in which case Suihan throws the learner a curve ball.

**Zuko o shinu. **

In this case, Zuko underwent the most change. Suihan doesn't mark proper names or titles so the ergative nature of Suihan would not be apparent. If we replace the names with nouns, we see the pattern.

**I régi i sálan sterbetta.**

**I sálan shindetta. **

**The queen the mouse killed. **(The queen killed the mouse.)

**The mouse died. **

_Again the mouse changed the most. _The queen may have gunk on her shoe from stepping on the mouse but she is not really 'different' in either her state of being or location. She merely instigated the action that 'killed' the mouse or acted as the 'agent' who kicked the mouse into the afterlife or eternity. The mouse has gone from being a living thing to dead._ This is the essence of an ergative language. _Few human languages behave this way but in a way it has its own logic. Suihan tracks the changes in various situations.

Karo gave me many of these examples. You will notice the verb comes at the end like Kyoshinese. Unlike Kyoshinese, this isn't an absolute, hard and fast rule. One of the reasons Suihan confounds students is that they have no hard and fast rule to place the verb. Karo assures me it's an art. I've had many occasions to place verbs where I thought they needed to go but somehow mucked things up and got odd looks from Karo. The speaker's intent plays a role in this and at first comes as a bit of a black art but some thought goes into it. I might wish to emphasize 'me, myself and I' and say: 'I huge spider just saw – _Og n__á__grette andrinan __é__he _**_m__í__ru da_**_!_" I could grab Zuko and say, "_S__úko, i nágri __andrinan _**_sl__ó__ narat_**_ tui!_" Zuko, **look at** the huge spider. I wouldn't immediately say – crawling up your leg – but that's me. The bold type highlights the verb and the second phrase is a command for Zuko to look.

You will notice two words are highlighted as_ the verb_. Suihan verbs typically do this. One verb (the root) gives the meaning while the other does the hard work. The verbs **míru** – to see,** sló –** to take a look at, are accompanied working verbs that set the time frame and mood. Some of this will be examined further on in the letter but I warn you in advance that the Indo European verb is a complex beast.

The word for spider in Suihan is _'andri'_ but again Suihan added an ending and it became _andri_**_nan_**. I have explained why this happens in my last letter. One issue I never touched on is why '_n__á__gri – big_' appeared as _n__á__grette_. When we attended the _Royal Fire Nation Academy for Girls_, we learned of the adjective as a word like 'big' that modified nouns. Suihan treats such words as something akin to a verb. The word nágri translates as big but means 'is big'. The word nágrette means big as well but really means 'was big'. While weird to us, it happens because Suihan has no word for 'to be, is, are or am' so in the sentences: '_The spider is big__'_ or '_The spider was big__'_, Suihan recruits the adjective to word as the verb. This results in:**_'I andri __n__á__gri.__'_** and **_'I n__á__grette andri.'_** with Suihan showing its free word order in all of its glory.

Such features explain why when we finally meet up with those extraterrestrial civilizations; our scribes will be told to translate the Avatar's speech into all human languages_ including _Suihan.

**The Sounds of Suihan **

**'or'**

**Why They Can Sing So Well**

Suihan has a reputation for being the language of singers. I can't sing. At one point in time, the church of Suihan used to castrate the young boys with the sweetest singing voices but this has never given rise to the stereotype of Suihan being the language of eunuchs. Suihan has a very simple sound system compared to Chinese and unlike most dialects of Chinese, the vowels in Suihan are simple and pure. Few students complain of having trouble making the sounds of Suihan although as it will become clear, Suihanese people can't spell and they inherited their written language from Kyohsinese. As a gigantic kluge, Suihan spelling ranks as first rank one.

Unlike Chinese, Suihan doesn't make use of tone. Fire Nation Chinese has four tones (high, low, rising and level) and so a word can have the same sounds yet be different because it takes a different tone. Chinese speakers attribute much of Suihan's 'flat' sound to its lack of tone. Suihan is an intonational language where pitch distinguishes the intent of the utterance – questions have a rising tone, statements are level and commands are forced and higher in pitch. The 'tone' or intonation of a language is the first thing foreigners hearing a language will notice. Suihan speakers find Chinese _'sing song like'_ and Chinese speakers find Suihan _'soft but flat'. _The lack of tone in Suihan removes one element from the grammar that requires learning: tone. Both languages use intonation in much the same way to mark the intent of the speaker but Suihan relieves the learner of learning the discreet tone for each word.

Suihan has far fewer distinct sounds or phonemes than Chinese with about 25. Fire Nation Chinese has about 50 distinct sounds and this is a below average number for a Chinese dialect. A phoneme is a unit of sound a native speaker recognizes as distinct but as dialects exist, the true count can vary. Suihan has about 25 distinct sounds but some dialects drop the 'v' sound while others like the North Eastern Dialect spoken around Torquay and Komatsu has a lisp or 'th' sound. In this letter, I will use Modern High Suihan as the standard for simplicity. I will use the modern spellings as well (making note of the idiosyncrasies as they arise) because it works fairly well to represent the sounds you will hear listening to Suihan.

Suihan has only six vowels but unlike Chinese, they contrast in duration. A short vowel could be said to be uttered for 'one beat' while a long vowel is identical but one uttered for one and half times to twice as long. Suihan vowels differ in length, in whether the tongue moves to the front or back of the mouth, lies low, in the middle or at the top of the mouth and whether the lips are rounded.

**The List of Suihan Vowels**

The long vowels have an accent over them so: á, é, í, ó, ú and uí are the long vowels. They are in all ways the same as the short ones except in duration.

Front Back

High: i ui u

Mid: e o

Low: a

The two letter combination 'ui' represents the high front round vowel. Some dialects of Chinese have this vowel and to pronounce it, simply make the 'i' sound and round your lips. The other vowels are pretty unremarkable and are the same as the cardinal vowels in Chinese or Kyoshinese. To hear how they sound, place your tongue in each position and make a vowel sound.

**The Consonants of Suihan. **

Suihan phonetics differs from Chinese and Kyoshinese in one important way: Suihan allows consonant clusters at the beginning of words. One of the more exotic properties of Suihan for the novice is seeing words that begin in 'st', 'fr' or 'mn' and end in 'st'. I found words with 'sf' and 'vr' threw me for a loop. After a few days, the novelty wore off and words like _'sfora – rot'_ or _'vrasti – flat'_ went from being tongue twisters to just words.

Compared to some dialects of Chinese, Suihan has a rather well organized and functional set of consonants. Some Chinese dialects have three variants of 'p' – one spoken softly, one spoken with a puff of air and one with a little pause or catch in the throat afterward. In Suihan, consonants form a nice, simple list. I organized the list by the place in the mouth where the consonant is made and the type of consonant.

Listed from the point of articulation from the front to back of the mouth. Each class of sound uses less restriction of the mouth cavity from the stops (complete obstruction of airflow) to liquids (very little air friction).

Stops: b, p d, t g, k

Affricates: gi, ci

Fricatives: v, f s si h

Nasals: m n

Liquids: l r

This is it. Suihan has fifteen consonants. The 'r' sound is a rolled 'r' which is like the pirate cry – arr!.

I will bring up one aspect of the sound system that does intrigue. At some point in history, Suihan lost a class of sounds called semivowels. These are the 'y' sound in 'yes' and the 'w' sound in 'we'. The Sand Bender dialects maintain these sounds and the word for 'six – chwech' is a tongue twister.

In further sections you will notice some sounds bracketed by parentheses like so (e). The sound inside is part of the prefix or suffix or word but that sound drops out if its presence would violate the rules of phonotactics in Suihan. Phonotactics are the rules that dictate which sounds can appear together.

**The Grammar of the Verb**

**'or' **

"**It Actually Works!"**

In any language, the verb is king. Without a verb (in most cases) the rest of the words hang around like unemployed youth with nothing to do. So what is a verb? A verb is the kind of word in a language that does verb things. A crusty old school teacher might explain as she scratches the chalk across the blackboard that a verb expresses an action. This is true in all but every way. _My friend Katara does not like truffles_. _The lemur froze to death_. The first is a fact about Katara but about as much action happens here as happens in a hunchback's romantic life. The second is a change of state from thawed and mobile to rigid and dead. The lemur doesn't do anything interesting when frozen.

Some verbs clearly express action. The actor does something like: write, kill, eat, clobber, build or wreck. Some express some way the actor changes: go (change in location), die (change in breathing privileges). Others simply express a state about the actor such as: like, want, desire, know. Some do nothing at all that I can tell. Does anyone really need the_ 'is' _in _'it is raining'_? Rain 'falls' doesn't it?

Lets go back to our jars. In Chinese and Suihan, we have a set of jars. We can put labels on those jars for the actor, the receiver of the action and so forth. The verb is the jar that we use to place the words that will rule the sentence. In Chinese, I can't look at a random word 'chiang' and tell if its a verb – but I sure know when someone forgets it. The sentence has no ruler, the actors and props have no director; the orchestra has players but no conductor. The verb is the word a sentence needs (most of the time) to be whole, complete and for the parts to make sense.

You will notice that I mentioned someone looking at a Chinese word could tell if it is a verb or not. For understanding, this isn't important because Chinese verbs have a 'special' place where they usually sit. Like the conductor who always faces the orchestra from the front or the pastor who preaches from the pulpit; the verb in Chinese usually sits in the second spot of the sentence. Chinese is thus a _'weakly typed'_ language in that the form of a word, how it ends or some manner in which it is formed doesn't reveal its function. Think of our jars containing words. In Chinese all the jars are clear and the contents look the same (they have red stuff in them). Looking at the contents of any individual jar (word) doesn't reveal what it does or means. When you make a sentence in Chinese, the order in which you place the jars reveals what the words do. It is as if the shelf in the pantry always makes you place the strawberry jelly in the first place, the raspberry in the second and rhubarb in the third.

Chinese and Kyoshinese are paltry compared to the Suihan verb. Just the full conjunctions of the basic two dozen Suihan verbs would fill a large book (and this would omit historic, dialect variations of some verbs, rare or literary forms).

Suihan has jars that can be placed in many orders. No rule prevents the speaker from placing the verb jar at the end or as the first word in a sentence. Suihan is a_ 'strongly typed' _language since the function of a word becomes obvious from simply _looking at the endings it can take_. Think of the jars in Suihan as being made of colored glass – clear for verbs, green for nouns and so forth. In Suihan, a verb is defined as the kind of word that takes certain endings nouns can't accept and has certain parts or basic forms that are quite distinct.

Suihan and the other languages related to it like Sanskrit treat the verb very differently than Chinese. Chinese verbs have one part or form – the root. The word for 'to go' in Chinese never varies regardless of whether the action took place in the past or will happen in the future. Suihan verbs have ten basic parts:** the root, the infinitive, the past, the aorist, the future, the past participle, the aorist participle, the gerund, the subjunctive **and** the ****modal**. Sanskrit has at last count – twelve parts.

_The_ _root of the verb_ usually ends in -u, although -o or -ó can also mark the root form. The root form and the first person singular form are almost always the same. The root form is the most basic form of the verb and is also the most common form seen. Dictionaries list entries for verbs by this form so '_mastu – eat'_ and _'dorstu – drink' _are listed with those forms. The root on its own has no meaning but is used in tense constructions, in the antipassive or medial voices and after certain verbs. _'On da__ta__ i pinke l__í__frani ar__u_ - He does have the five books.' '_Nu n__é__i __pesken dat__ó__ mastu_ – we do not eat fish.'

_The infinitive_ always used the root form but the root is preceded by the _mark of the infinitive_ -é. The infinitive in Suihan is the form used when a verb is required to add additional information to another verb. The verb '_dróbu_ – steal', has the infinitive form_ 'é dróbu'_. The root and the infinitive can't function by themselves, they require another 'working' verb. '_Gena on __é dróbu_! - He begins to steal.' Here the verb 'begins – _gena_' is at the first position. Ignore the wobbly word order for now: Karo did give these examples off the top of his head.

Suihan has three basic tenses. A tense is the part of the verb that indicates the time frame of the action the verb communicates. Unlike the basic parts, the tenses of the verb conjugate or take on different endings to indicate agreement in number and person with its argument or actor. The past tense refers to events that have already happened and is marked by adding '(e)tt' to the stem and dropping the 'u'. The future tense refers to evens that will (probably) happen and is marked by adding '(ai)s' and dropping the 'u' from the stem. The aorist tense is that form that is neither past nor future and it is formed by dropping the 'u' and plopping endings on what remains behind. Chinese speakers confuse the aorist tense with the present tense – in reality Suihan speakers use it for events that always happen, have no time frame or when recounting events or telling a story.

_The past and present participle_ are completely regular in most cases. These forms crop up in compound tenses. The past participle participates in forming compound past perfect tenses where the action has already been completed and has no effect in the present. The past participle is the first person simple past form of the verb. The present participle is used in compound present perfect tenses when the action has on going consequences. The verb 'ríbu – read' uses 'ríbetta' for the past participle and 'ríbu' for the present participle.

_The gerund_ is the noun formed out of a verb and typically acts like a noun. Most gerunds are formed by adding (a)sta to a stem. The verb '_dróbu_ – steal' has the gerund '_drobasta_ – stealing'. Suihan lacks a copula verb like 'desu' in Kyoshinese or 'to be'. This leads to what could be best described as 'Starfire' expression. Starfire is the red haired alien in Teen Titans with a speech problem. Suihan makes use of phrases like '_**og dao i ciántastan.**__'_ – 'I do the singing.' Suihan also uses the gerund in a manner found in Kyoshinese where the genitive role is used if the gerund acts as a kind of modifier. '**I giénti kéfustum**' or 'the mall of shopping', '**I másta spédastum**' or 'the bridge of walking' – pedestrian bridge.

Suihan considers the subjunctive and the modal special parts of the verb. The subjunctive expresses that the speaker has the mood of subjectivity or doubt about the action – a sentiment often conveyed by the word 'if'. The subjunctive mood as it is also called takes the root form and drops the 'u' and replaces it with 'i' with most verbs and uses a helper verb. The six major irregular verbs have full subjunctive conjugations.

The modal appears with certain verbs that modify the sense of the action. The verb takes on the ending (n)ai and couples with one of the nine modal verbs: deháru – to be able to (can) deku – to want, fuísu – to wish to, gésiu – to make happen, iuppu – must, kaku – to allow to, kiru – shall, naru – will, to become, topu – to be permitted to. '_T__ui__ n__é__ dehárat nógai.'_ means 'You can't swim.' B eware of these verbs - they aren't irregular - they are idiomatic. The verb naru is a modal verb when it means_ 'will/would'_ and is irregular. When used to mean_ 'grow/become'_ it becomes a run of the mill verb.

Verbs come in two flavors in Suihan. **Perfect** or **complete** (terminology varies depending on the grammar book). These verbs number 18 and are the ones that have complete and often irregular conjugations. All regular verbs and any verb that can take an object are called **defective** verbs as are modal verbs. They have incomplete conjugations due to their meaning (modals have no infinitive form, transitive verbs lack subjunctive forms and so on). Defective verbs require auxiliaries to take some forms perfect verbs have a** synthetic** or single word form.

**Conjugation in Suihan Verbs**

Conjugation is linguist speak for _'a list of all the forms a verb can take'_. You can find tables in the back of dictionaries and grammar books that 'conjugate' or 'list' all the forms a Suihan verb can take. In Suihan, verbs are considered regular if they take all the expected forms. If they deviate in some way from expectations: they might have a root ending in 'o' or deviate in a small way such as not taking an ending or in a few cases, or be just unpredictable. Suihan calls the regular verbs 'weak' and the ones that are not regular 'strong'.

Some Suihan language texts come with a 'handy' verb wheel. It has various troublesome verbs and by dialing the wheel you can find the correct form for any social occasion. In the real world, you don't have time to dial the right verb in time to keep the pace of the conversation moving as a simple error will seldom cause 'total meaning failure' or a 'rip in reality' or social humiliation. Such tricks give you the facts about Suihan verbs but not the subtle nuances and for that you need a native speaker of Suihan who can teach by example.

Instead of conjugating, I'll talk about building a verb. Suihan behaves much like Kyoshinese, quite unlike Chinese in that it **glues endings** together to a root one after another in a set order – it is **an agglutinative **language (a fancy term meaning 'glues endings'). To make a Suihan verb, begin with a root. Roots end in 'u' in most cases. As mentioned before, Suihan is agglutinative so pick the root look at it. One good root might be '_hanu_ – to speak'. In the basic Aorist tense, the bits you can glue on are:

This chart shows the classic aorist forms for regular 'transitive verbs' for the singular and plural (shown in bold).

First: **og** – u (a)** nu** – o (an)

Second:** tui** – at **vui** – est

Third: **on, in, an** – a **ona** – an

on – he, in – she, an – it.

The second person singular 'tui' has another form 'cie' which is used as a term of affection but the ending of the verb is the same. The bracketed endings in this list are used in the past tense.

The Aorist _'og hanu – I speak'_ or '_nu hano – we speak' _form a pattern almost universal for most verbs. Actually the Aorist doesn't quite mean the same as the present tense 'speak' but we'll delve into that later.

In most cases, this is it. To form the past tense, simply take the root, lop off the 'u' and pull out the past tense marker – ett and glue it on then pick your pronoun. In the case of _hanu_, you end up with _'hanett'*_ thus _'hanetta'_ is the form that goes with 'og' as in '_og hanetta_ – I spoke' or '_nu hanettan_' or 'we spoke'. The future tense is made the same way using _'ais'_ and so _'og hanaisu – I will speak'_ or_ 'nu hanaiso – we will speak.'_

This following section will appear a bit mind bending at first. Suihan verbs behave differently depending on the kind of verb class they belong to. In Suihan (and Chinese although it is not indicated) verbs can be of three types: _accusative __or transitive__, unaccusative and __intransitive_. Any run of the mill verb that can take an object is an accusative verb. Such verbs are _throw, split, chew, bite, eat_. Unaccusative verbs communicate a state of change and the agent doesn't actively do anything to bring it about – die, rot and grow are unaccusative verbs as they need to. Intransitive verbs communicate a state where the agent is also the recipient of the action. Chinese verbs can behave both ways as they have modifiers - Suihan verbs make a distinction. Verbs of movement or change of location are intransitive. Since Suihan nouns and verbs behave differently depending on the type of verb; the concept will become important as you learn the language.

The Suihan verb has tense or a time frame. Chinese verbs do not have tense – the root never changes and so the work of indicating the time frame is passed on to adverbs of time: today, now, yesterday, then, always, soon, later and so on. Suihan packages the same information as endings on the verb. In the previous section, we explored how Suihan used endings to build up simple tenses. Suihan makes use of compound tenses to further refine the time frame and now we'll explore aspects of that system.

Chinese views time as a place and a speaker uses a separate word to describe the time at which the verb is placed. If the Chinese metaphor views time as a location where an event takes place, Suihan views time as a ribbon. This ribbon extends from the past, through the present, along into the future and verb tenses slice this ribbon up into pieces. The simple past and simple future slice the ribbon into single small pieces – they describe a single moment in time. Oddly enough, the Aorist doesn't slice the ribbon in any way – it is 'timeless'.

The Aorist tense is actually one of those features that make Suihan unique and typically Indo European. Chinese speakers learning the language confuse native Suihan speakers by using the Aorist (wrong endings and all) as if it describes the present. Lady Ursa found this a bit mind meddling at first but Suihan actually has four present tenses: the Present Perfect, The Present Indicative and The Present Continuous and the Aorist. I mention this because it actually forms a template that allows you to understand how the past and future tenses also work.

Some verbs describe action that takes place in an instant. Few things explode twice. Some things take place over a period of time: the engine of a train runs and the rain falls but none of these things take forever to happen. A tree can live for centuries, a person can work for decades and the Kyoshi Red parrot can pine for the fjords for years. The real secret to Suihan verbs is to understand that it separates tense (the part of the ribbon in time an event action or state happens) from sense (the perspective of the observer). In the present, actions can being in the past and echo on to the present – the present perfect. An action can begin in the past, continue now and go on into the future – the present continuous. Some actions can happen now – the present indicative. Of course some actions have no time frame and are in the Aorist. The past and the future tenses have the same senses as the present.

Three verbs do this work. If the verb _'__dao' _appears in a conjugated form then the sense we get is of an action coming to completion now. The term 'perfect' implies a completed action. If _'iku'_ pops up its ugly irregular head then the sense of of the indicative. The indicative means the action is going on now. If the verb _'naru'_ has center stage, the action is continuous. A hockey game in the second periods has meant that I hear my husband cursing at the radio, I heard him cursing at the radio and this behavior will continue for another hour or so.

**The Partial Verbs: Adjectives and Adverbs**

Adjectives and adverbs ad extra information to verbs and nouns and include words like 'blue', small, quickly and hardly. Suihan simplifies this part of its grammar considerably compared to Chinese or Kyoshinese. In Suihan, the words used to modify nouns, verbs or sentences: adverbs or adjectives take only two endings. In the present and future, the these words takes the 'i' ending: _rasi_ – red, _n__é__lli_ – quickly, _app__ó__tti_ – late, _aoi_- blue. They take on the tense of the main verb in the past: _rasette, nellette, __appottette, aonette_. When used with nouns, they reside before the noun they affect. When used to modify verbs, they reside at the beginning of the verb phrase. If the whole sentence is modified then they appear where the speaker wishes provided they do not split certain phrases. The best example of this is the 'negation' or polar adjective: ne, nai and and 'timeless' words like, hiku - always, nori - never and bastoen - for all time.

**The Noun in Suihan**

**'or' **

**We Make Declensions Cool. **

Nouns in Suihan have four classes (sometimes called genders), two numbers and eight subject cases. If I began a Suihan language lesson with this sentence; withdrawals from the class would rise. The Suihan noun incites the kind of fear reserved for polio outbreaks and large, butt ugly spiders. Chinese texts list all sorts of clever tricks for memorizing the gender of nouns and some even come with a clever 'noun wheel' that you can use as an aid to studying the various ways the gender and number and case of a number all fit together.

Like the human appendix, cockroaches and sharks, Suihan may have an ancient past and noun class is a living fossil. Indo Europeans may have had been animists and classified objects by the gender of their 'spirit'. Suihan still possesses this as a piece of the grammar. Chinese students make more of a problem than it is. The same students use the Chinese counting words which are also a classification scheme akin to gender or class. Suihan nouns usually take on an ending for their class and the few unpredictable forms are regular in most respects.

Class One or Masculine nouns typically end in 'a'. Class Two or Feminine nouns almost always end in 'i' or 'ui'. Class Three or Neuter nouns end in 'u' or 'o'. Class Four or Mass Nouns are a 'catch all' category that includes some compound nouns like 'bélfast – forest literally 'tree – glen' or irregular nouns like '_blin_ – farm' or '_plen_ – child' and those ending in consonants like rávelin – seawall. Those nouns that are idiomatically plural or refer to mass quantities like 'risu – rice', 'bovast – cattle' are also in this class. Suihan has a large number of these kinds of nouns since it lacks 'counters' like '**grains** of rice'.

Suihan has singular and plural number. The noun drops its end vowel and takes on the ending 'i'. Not all nouns in Suihan take plural endings. Mass nouns have no plural form. Since feminine nouns often end in 'i', whether they are plural is often ambiguous (a pattern common in Indo European languages). Those feminine nouns that end in 'ui' will take a plural ending.

Suihan possesses a degree of freedom of word order unlike any Asian language and a degree of malleability in the ordering of phrases unknown in Chinese dialects. Much of this freedom of word order comes from the system of subject case endings embedded in the grammar of the Suihan noun and the ergative nature of case marking in Suihan.

All languages have subject case, not all languages have subject case endings. Subject case consists of the extra information attached to a noun that tells the listener the role the noun plays in the sentence. You can think of a sentence as a kind of little play with roles for the players (nouns) and without a system of role marking, just like any play, the sentence makes no sense. Chinese uses word order. The subject of the sentence (the doer) usually comes first, while the recipient comes after the verb.

Suihan nouns take endings to mark case. Suihan has eight subject cases: _ergative, absolutive, dative, genitive, locative __(place: in - at)__, instrumental __(tool: with or by)__, partitive __(actions with no __or partial__ results or parts of a larger whole – from a store)__ and ablative __(source: from or out of )_. These can further be sorted into three classes. The cases used for simple agents either acting or receiving an action are the direct cases: _ergative_ and _absolutive_. The oblique cases add extra information and are secondary cases: _dative_ and _genitive_. The two basic and two secondary cases are capable of being required by verbs. The last four cases are not required to complete a basic sentence and are the derivative cases: _locative, instrumental, partitive and ablative_.

**The ergative case** is the unmarked case in Suihan as nouns take no case ending. Suihan lacks a 'copula' verb – 'to be or its forms' and the verb 'to do – dao' is called in many constructions. The subject of 'dao' calls the ergative case for its subject. Copula phrases requiring no verb '_I hana st__r__á__vi – The __language (is) difficult_' or_ 'I t__ó__r kari. - the tower is black'_ call the ergative.

**The absolutive case** is marked by the (a)n ending on Suihan nouns. The absolutive marks the subject of verbs that either take no object, denote a change in the subject or mark a change in location or state. Such verbs are often called intransitive. The absolutive also marks the object of the verb or the recipient of an action those verbs are termed transitive.

These two basic cases define Suihan as an ergative language. They also are the first two labels we use for our 'noun' jars. If we want the freedom or word order beloved of poets and bards and other unemployable people; we will need more subject cases and in Suihan that means more word endings.

**The dative case** is marked by (n)u. The dative case functions to mark the indirect object often called the benefactor. In the sentence: _"Katara gave the headache to her boyfriend."_ the dative is that phrase _'to her boyfriend'_. In Suihan we wind up with (I'll duplicate it word for word and fail): _'Katara d__á__netta i gl__ú__n__í__geinan i__tte__**v**__**ó**__**rin**__**á**__**ffanu**__.' _In this case, the bold indicates the dative. The dative case also gets used after certain verbs:_ 'tasku – to help'_ and_ 'kotu – to listen to' _are two examples.

**The genitive case **is often called the possessive and it is marked by (u)m or (n)um. In Kyoshinese, the particle 'no' is used to do much the same job when linking nouns: 'kyo no kotoba – the word of the day.' In Kyoshinese, the genitive has the general meaning 'of'. Suihan has a similar formula: '_i m__á__t i nari__**num**_**' **or the way Karo likes it spoken'_i nari__**num**__ i m__á__t'_. He finds both orderings unambiguous, Kyoshi Islanders would find 'kotoba no kyo' odd. Unlike Kyoshinese, the Suihan genitive can shift and move within the simple possessive phrase. Suihan also uses the genitive to mark certain kinds of gerunds (modifiers) as well as after one of the 'of' or genitive verbs: _'suru – to make out of'_. It functions in the superlative (-est) and comparative (-er) forms of adjectives: '_i b__ó__gi rasi tunum_ – the reddest house.' and '_i f__á__ri rasi tunum_ – the redder house.' The genitive gets called idiomatically (I won't give examples) and when measures or quantities are named: a ton of bricks.

Houses in Suihan are often red brick; not brightly painted Fire Nation red and gold Gothic creations and homeowners like nice red new bricks. I haven't yet discussed adjectives but they have popped up briefly. The word _b__ó__gi –_most and_f__á__ri__ –_ more create the idea of comparisons and by themselves take the genitive case. In the same way, _m__á__ri_ and _se__í__firi_ - less and least also call the genitive.

**The locative case **is what it says. It denotes the location something is _at_ and takes the ending (m)ette. In Suihan, the locative case describes everywhere a lemur can be in relation to a tree. In most instances, this case gives you a warning because a locative preposition precedes it. So '_I l__í__miri ka arfamette ciettu na__n__._' or 'The lemurs are sitting in the tree.' I won't give the full list some but locative prepositions are: _de_ – to (a location), _fa _– next to,_ git__ó_ – behind, _ka_ – in, _k__é_ – out, _no_ – on, _nu_ – in front of, _ó_ – inside, _ú_ - outside.

**The instrumental case **is called when something is used as a tool, a method of doing an action or of a means. It takes the ending (m)ast and normally stands alone. _M__é__ni l__í__miri i abellan __í__ galpi__**mast**__ kenu na_. My lemur peels apples _with his hands_.' In some cases a noun preceded by the particle 'sa' will take the instrumental. Many verbs call this preposition: _pelu_ – to play a musical instrument is an example.

**The partitive case** is often called the prepositional. The marker for the partitive is (n)ásse. The locative is the case for nouns affected by a particle that denotes its location. The partitive mark nouns when they are matched with particles that denote some kind of change of location or state. "_I l__á__ttan k__é__ i rassan__**á**__**sse**__ fluvu na_.' The milk is pouring _out of the jug_.' Expressions of quantified time: 'pimp minútinásse – five minutes' take the partitive as do 'iario' phrases –_ 'iario – yet' _or _'iario k__é__r__í__ba - almost_'.

**The ablative is** the case used in indicating the source or origin of something. The marker of the ablative is (e)hé. Some verbs can take an ablative object but require particle 'ru' to precede the verb. "'_Karo pesette l__í__ffrinan i __**herreh**__**é**__ kau datte._' or 'Karo bought some books **from** the store.' I give the next example as a memory aid: "_Tifa__ru__ i __**d**__**é**__**rah**__**é**__ sioppetta._' or God created **the Earth**."

Pronouns in Suihan

All languages have pronouns that act like stand ins for the actors if you don't wish to repeat yourself or refer to yourself in the third person all the time. You can revisit the list of basic Suihan pronouns in a previous section of the letter. Most Realm languages like Chinese and Kyoshinese allow the speaker to omit them. Ask a Kyoshi Islander for the list of all of them and he'll probably have to consult a dictionary. They usually don't use them and when they do, the pronoun includes social information and deference – everything but what they refer to. Suihan requires a pronoun in most places that require them and **they can't be dropped**.

The pronouns have declensions like nouns but are highly irregular. I will avoid listing them because students have jumped out of windows for less. Suihan has two classes of pronouns: definite and indefinite. You have seen the definite pronouns which work much like the ones in Chinese. Suihan has two indefinite pronouns:_** í **_which is singular and can replace _**og, tui, on, in, an, **_and_** ía**_which is plural. They come into use in reflexive constructions, in certain clauses, when the definite pronoun has already made its appearance and in certain ergative constructions. Like definite pronouns, they also decline like nouns.

**A Few Notes**

** How free is free word order? **Suihan has extremely free word order. Karo provided many examples and you will notice words move around a great deal but you should also notice a few constants. The definite article _'i'_ is always the first element before the noun and its baggage. Modifiers (adjectives) for nouns always have to occur before or after the noun they modify. Verbs slide about and Suihan even allows split infinitives and other splitting of things grammatical. Since the verb rules the whole sentence – the king of words or the elephant in the room can sit where it damn well pleases. Some linguists refer to languages like Suihan with free word order as a** non-configurational language**.

**Why is Suihan Ergative?** Suihan is classed as an ergative language because linguists compared it to Chinese and Kyoshinese which have a strongly accusative grammar and found it had abandoned the typical scheme of the subject and object. Suihan prefers to track 'change' not role.. Suihan may have evolved an ergative grammar in order to_ 'overload'_ verbs. Verb _'overloading'_ refers to the reuse of a verb like '_illeru _- leave' or '_suru_ – to open' with different subject cases for the nouns to allow speakers to use the same verb forms with differing meanings. The verb _'il__l__eru' _with an ergative subject means to put down, with an absolutive subject means to leave a place. A dative object means 'to leave behind' and a genitive object means 'to depart for.' Kyoshinese and Chinese can't achieve this precision without using different verbs.

** What is a determiner?** A determiner is the 'i' particle in Suihan. It means the speaker refers to a specific noun. It always precedes the noun or the noun and whatever modifiers it has. Some Chinese dialects have determiners and the Suihan 'i' means something like 'the'.

** What is a particle? **A particle is typically a short, single syllable word that includes the determiner, the mark of the infinitive verb, the mark of the ablative verb and what Chinese call prepositions. They can refer to location, time, a sense of a thing and pop out of nowhere to denote some kind of grammatical machinery is at work. Some texts call them prepositions but Suihan allows the speaker to place them at the beginning or end of the phrase so they need not** precede **anything as Chinese prepositions always do.

**What does it say when_ 'a verb calls'_?** Suihan grammar uses the term 'call' to mean 'requires or needs' a certain case, form or particle for the proper grammatical form to exist. Ergative verbs call a form of the verb_ 'naru' _to form compound tenses and call the absolutive case for their subject. Transitive verbs call _'dao' _and call the absolutive case for their object. In Suihan, two identical looking verbs can end up having completely different meanings because of 'their calls'. For Karo, his dictionary and even the characters used to write these words will treat these identical forms as completely different words because of the change of particle, case etc.

**What is overloading?** Suihan likes to _'overload'_ some classes of words like verbs. This means a simple verb can convey different meanings by changing the case of the subject, the object or adding a particle. This avoids homonyms which Suihan speakers dislike. The reason Suihan doesn't class an _overloaded_ verb as a homonym even though _'naru_' has the same forms whether it means become: will, now is happening, to take place now etc., is interesting. Suihan verbs have 'scope' which includes its sense, what case its subject calls and so forth which is a property of ergative languages. In a sense the 'verb' is the word plus everything it affects in the sentence - scope.

**Why doesn't Suihan have a 'copula' – a linking verb like 'desu' in Kyoshinese or 'to be' or is?** Kyoshinese has a copula verb and uses it prominently: 'Kimono wa akai desu' or 'The Kimono is red'. Suihan simply says '_the dog gray – i suba serói_'. According to Zeng, the Swamp Bending Tribes spoke a language that did this (but it was non – Indo European). Suihan does have a copula but it hides from open view. Modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) take endings for tense and are verb like: _'I suba serótette – the dog (was) gray'_. Some verbs can have copula like properties: _'dao'_ gets used in the sense of '_in fu__í__tta__stan__ da_ – it does raining.' The origins of the 'tette' past tense seen in Suihan is thought to have evolved from this kind of construction and meant something like: swim – did.

**What sounds do the letter combinations 'cei', 'gei' and 'sei' spell?** Suihan spelling has a few irregular features. The letter combinations ci, gi, si sound like ch in church, j in jet and sh in shed. The combination 'cei' crops up in place names and is pronounced 'ki' and the letter c in all other cases is to be taken as a 'k'. The 'e' in 'gei' and 'sei' is silent but changes the sound back to 'g as in get' and 's as in said'. The combination 'ts' occurs in rare instances and is pronounced 's'.

**Suihan and Kyoshinese have similarities. Are they related?** Not in any way. Kyoshinese is a language isolate and has resisted the efforts of linguists to place it in any language family. Suihan is unabashedly Indo European and the family traits run deep. Kyoshinese and Suihan shared history and grew up together so similarities are to be expected. Two thousand years ago, Kyoshinese and Suihan formed a 'Sprachbund' – a term for a group of languages in an area that share words and features. Suihan inherited Kyoshinese writing as well as vocabulary items. The terms '_hiki _– bright', '_kóri_ -dark' are Kyoshinese in origin. Kyoshinese has many words of Suihan origin as well: sakura – seíkri - cherry', '_riyu_ – reason – _r__í__gu_ (rule)'.

**Author's Notes – Aurici Crénicinum**

1: Kyoshinese is Japanese or a close copy. I borrowed some aspects of the Japanese sound system for Suihan. They differ vastly in the way they work. Japanese has prolific systems of compound word formation and words like bishonen (pretty boy) and bishojo (pretty girl) are frequent. Suihan and Indo European do not frequently use compounds but instead makes use of a complex system of roots and stems to form words. In Suihan '_éfeti_ – bishonen' or '_éfemu_ – bishojo' are definitely not compound word (and aren't culturally relevant except as a means to criticize art). Verbs of motion serve as a perfect example of this system. They have a structure of prefix (i) + core + affix. So 'iku, illeru, iláhu, igamu' are all verbs of motion and break apart: i (motion verb) + k, ller, láh, gam (core) + u which marks it as the root or first person. Such simple rules make coining new vocabulary _much_ easier.

This isn't compounding because these roots and added bits like prefixes and suffixes have little or no meaning on their own. Seldom does the speaker know the full extent of this mechanism in languages like Esperanto, Suihan or Korean which behave this way. Modern Indo European languages like English still have prefixes and suffixes to do this kind of word formation but word compounding is prevalent. Older Indo European languages such as Latin or Koine Greek showed this kind of word formation much more frequently and modern Uralic languages like Estonian still make use of it.

2: The Roman spelling is pretty close. Suihan uses Japanese hiragana to spell out words but not as syllables. The vowels of the hiragana represent the same vowels in Suihan with the u+i being used in situations found in the Roman spelling.

The accent for long vowels is typically as it is in Roman spelling – a dash over the vowel. Diagraphs are as they appear in Roman letters. Bear in mind the name 'abuga' and the proper order for

the letters are: '_ ui_' The compound consonants are not listed.

The abuga characters are simplified somewhat and more angular and in printing have serifs and scaled curves. A look like Times Roman or Helvetica works and place spaces between words. Never print top to botoom and justification is left to right as in English. Books and papers always open as they do in English.

3: Charts abound on my computer and provide a complete list of conjugations for verbs, their scope, tables of the declensions for nouns as well as lists of pronouns and their forms but Fan Fiction can't reproduce the formatting.


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